Denner's Wreck

Chapter Twenty-Four

“I knew a woman once from another village, a village far from here, on the south coast where the eastern forests give way to sandy beaches, who claimed that she had once been a guest of Lord Hollingsworth of the Sea. As she told it, she had been playing on the beach as a girl, throwing sand out onto the drifting watersheets and watching as they first tried to eat it, then spat it back up in hundreds of little spurts that sent it bouncing around madly-apparently that was a popular game among the young people around there. As she played, though, something rose up from the sea, a great black shape that she could never describe clearly. She once said it looked something like an ear of corn the size of a house, or perhaps a giant fish, though of course there are no true fish in salt water.

"At any rate, a man came out of this thing and spoke to her, and told her not to fling sand on the watersheets, because it could kill them. They were delicate, this man told her, and trying to eat the sand could give them the equivalent of a very bad stomach-ache, one so bad that it could kill the weaker ones.

"She thought this worrying about watersheets was absurd, and said so, despite her fear and wonder at this person's strange appearance and even stranger mode of travel, which she took for an odd sort of boat. The man retorted that she knew nothing of the sea or its creatures.

"She admitted that she knew very little, and after some further discussion she found that she had agreed to visit with the man in his home beneath the sea.

"The man was Lord Hollingsworth, of course, and his home the sunken palace Atlantis, deep beneath the ocean. They rode there together in the boat, or fish, or whatever it was, and he showed her many of the sea's creatures, weird and frightening things of every size and shape.

"You know, a watersheet is so thin that if you get the right angle, you can put your hand right through it and not even notice. It's so thin that it tears apart into practically nothing if you pick it up, so thin that you can only see it by the way it changes the texture of the water's surface-but it's so strong, in some ways, that it can live through the worst storms, storms that will smash a boat or a house to splinters. Well, this woman said that there were creatures in the sea that made watersheets seem as normal as rabbits. There were things that changed color and shape, things that swam by spitting out pieces of their own flesh, things that glowed in the dark, things with flesh she could see through, so that she could watch their blue-green blood flowing. There were worms kilometers long, things like fish with heads at both ends-oh, she could go on for hours describing the monstrosities Lord Hollingsworth showed her.

"But what she really remembered was the Power's own comments on these creatures. ‘You know,’ she said he said, ‘I never get tired of watching these. They're stranger than anything I could ever make.'

"And of course, I'm sure that you'll be struck with the same thing that struck her, and that struck me when I heard that-if he didn't make all the creatures in the sea, who did?"

– from a conversation with Atheron the Storyteller

In all the old stories, the tales of the ancient times when death was a common thing, the heroes always faced certain doom bravely, daring their foes to step forth and do battle, loudly proclaiming their faith in whatever noble cause they served, right to the last.

Geste wondered how, in all the hells of every dead religion that had ever been preached, anyone could ever believe such tripe. He was facing death now, he knew, and he was too terrified to stand, let alone laugh in its face. He fell back in his chair, teeth chattering, his entire body shaking with fear, forcing his eyes to stay open in the forlorn hope that he might see and fend off at least one or two attacks, extending his existence for a few precious seconds.

All he saw was his own face, mockingly reflected in the stasis field.

Thaddeus's laughter surrounded him, roaring laughter that did not sound sane to him.

“You thought you had me, didn't you, Trickster?” Thaddeus shouted. “You thought that you had me in stasis forever, out of your way, so you could go on playing God with these pitiful primitives, go on playing your stupid games with the women! Well, Trickster, it looks like I'm the one with the last laugh, the one with the best trick!"

Geste could not have answered had he wanted to. He had lived his entire life, centuries now, with the conviction that he would live on until he grew tired of it-and the happy suspicion that he would never grow tired of it. Death was for other, lesser beings, never for A.T. Geste of Achernar IV.

Now he knew, with absolute certainty, that Thaddeus was going to kill him, and the thought of death, of ending, of nonexistence, tumbled down on him like an endless avalanche. He waited, trembling, for oblivion.

It wasn't fair, something screamed in the back of his mind. Sure, mortals died all the time, but they knew they were going to die, they were told from early childhood that they would someday die, and no one had ever told him that, no one had prepared him. He had been promised eternal life, and he was being cheated out of it because he had been stupid enough to stand up for what was right, instead of cowering like the rest.

“How did you hide that thing, anyway?” Thaddeus asked. “I didn't see, either through my puppet or on the recordings. It's a good trick, Geste-not good enough, of course, but a good trick. How did you do it?"

Like the swift and sudden dawn of Denner's Wreck, the realization burst in Geste's mind that Thaddeus was not going to kill him immediately. He wanted something, first. Fear washed away. It was if he had been trapped inside a mounting wave that had broken upon the seashore-not the little waves of this tideless, moonless planet, or anything from the tamed and broken oceans of Terra, but the great pounding surf of Achernar IV. He was still afloat, drifting against his will, but he was no longer blind and drowning. He was able to think again.

“I'll tell you how I survived, if you like,” Thaddeus said, as if making casual conversation. “It wasn't hard. What you have in the bubble there is an old-fashioned clone. I made him about sixty, seventy years ago now, did a little surgery when he was about a year old, destroyed his personality, juiced up his growth hormones to bring him up close to my own size, and then grew a receiver into the brain, so that I could use that body myself. I've got a little switch here, so that, up until a few minutes ago, I could use whichever body I fancied at any given time. I did some adjustments, so we'd be as indistinguishable as possible-sped up his growth, as I said, and carved some scars, that sort of thing. A neat job, wasn't it?"

Geste managed to nod. His reflected face bobbed up and down on the stasis field, distorting as it slid across the magnifying curve of the sphere.

“I figured it might be useful to have a back-up of myself."

Geste fought to control his trembling; it lessened, but did not stop.

“That's about the smallest stasis generator I've ever seen, Geste; did you build it yourself?"

Geste twisted his head to one side, then back.

“No? Aulden?"

Another twist and return.

“No? Well, it doesn't matter. Is it collapsible? Is that it? I don't really see how it could be, though."

Thaddeus paused, but Geste did not respond.

“You know, with that clone of mine, I had the switching mechanism set so that if the signal ever got interrupted, I'd be in control of my own body again, so here I am. A little safety measure. Has it occurred to you just what you would have done to me, if I hadn't done that?” Thaddeus's voice, which had been bantering and conversational, took on an edge.

Geste shuddered once more, then managed to still himself.

“I don't think you've thought about that, Geste. You see, I am always in my own body, the essential self; I've never trusted technological transmigration. If I'm in another body, I don't know it's still me. Sure, lots of people have transferred into other bodies, or machines-it's been going on for millenia-but how do you know that they didn't just die, that the mind in the new body isn't a simulation that thinks it's the same person? I'm sure you've heard the philosophical debates about this, haven't you?"

Geste nodded.

“I was sure you had. So you see, I keep my consciousness, my personality, my soul, in my own head, this same one I was born with seven thousand years ago. When I used that other body, it was all remote control, using a little transceiver arrangement at the base of the brain. When you put that body into stasis, you cut off all the input and output through that transceiver. You cut off my brain, Geste. I wasn't in the stasis field, not the real me, so I stayed conscious the whole time, but I was cut off from my own body, because I can't run both at the same time. And I couldn't switch back, Geste-the control is worked from whichever body I'm controlling at the time. We're talking about total sensory deprivation. I had a very bad second or two, wondering if the emergency switch would work-I had designed it for when the clone was killed, not enfielded. I suppose you thought you were being merciful, using a stasis field instead of a blaster, but what if I hadn't had my little switch, Geste? You wouldn't even have known what you'd done to me! I'd have starved, rotted, conscious the whole time!” His voice rose to a cracking screech.

Geste, his mind still slowly emerging from panic, saw the error in this; Thaddeus would not have stayed conscious once his body deteriorated below a certain level, and in a state of total sensory deprivation he would have felt no pain, had no sensation of the passing of time.

Still, it would have been a gruesome fate indeed, and Geste, shaken and terrified as he was, decided not to quibble.

“Now, how did you get that stasis generator in here?” Thaddeus demanded.

The thought of actually answering Thaddeus truthfully occurred to him, but he suppressed it. Right now, he was sure, only the fact that he had information Thaddeus wanted was keeping him alive. Besides, he was sure that his voice would tremble-if he could speak at all. He remained silent.

“Damn it, punk, do you want me to have to dissect you to find out?"

Geste shuddered again, even while a part of his mind wondered what would happen if an autopsy knife cut into the mouth of the bent-space pocket. Would it pop back out into normal space, its integrity disrupted? What would it do to his head if that happened?

His gorge rose in his throat.

No, he desperately told himself, the knife couldn't cut the pocket, he was sure. It was far more likely that the blade would break.

“I'm sending some machines, Geste-we'll see if they can't convince you to be a little more forthcoming with your information."

Geste sat, watching the triangular black floater bumping helplessly against its own reflection on the stasis field, never spilling a drop of whatever beverage it held.

The machines Thaddeus sent would not be as ineffective, he was sure. He lifted the stasis generator, thinking hard.

Thaddeus spoke again, but this time his voice was cut off in mid-word.

“What the hel…” he began.

Geste looked up, suddenly hopeful.